


Never Yawning

by toucanpie



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: F/M, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 13:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3175084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toucanpie/pseuds/toucanpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan sits at his table and pretends he's not awake. He watches the occasional twitch of her hips when she forgets to suppress her shaking in time to the music. He stares at the blister on the back of her left ankle and the way her legs curve up from her feet to make her neat calves. "You want to take the guitars outside later?" Pre-split. (always a girl!Brendon)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Yawning

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ circa 2009. Written for a prompt at the anon_lovefest comm.

They eat breakfast in middle-Idaho with the bus still running beneath them. They're behind their special schedule and probably won't arrive in town quite on time, but no-one really seems to care. 

Ryan lifts himself up onto the fold-out table and stares out the window. The freeway is relatively empty, but every so often they get overtaken by small cans of cars or lumbering 4X4s. Somewhere upfront the radio is playing softly, but the lounge is quiet except for the sound of Brendon and Jon eating. Further away Spencer is lolling in his bunk, arm swinging back and forth in the aisle, humming to himself as he texts one-handed.

In the glass he can see Brendon across from him. She's sitting cross-legged on the couch, a bowl of cereal cradled in her hands, and she has a bruise on her shin from where she missed the first bus step yesterday. It stands out almost meanly on her pale skin. 

He rubs at the back of his neck and then round and over his stubble. He's wearing his straggly pyjama pants and one of Jon's hoodies and he's cold. Brendon is in her panties and a too-big t-shirt and she seems completely and utterly fine.

-

"I need to shave," Brendon says lazily five minutes later, running a hand over her knee and setting her head down on Jon's shoulder. "Ugh, effort."

Ryan watches in the glass as she unfolds her legs and stretches out lengthways over the rest of the couch.

"Nah," says Jon. "We love you au naturale."

She rolls her eyes, picking absently at fading nail polish on her thumb.

"I borrowed your t-shirt," she says.

"I know."

"And I'm not going to give it back."

"That's alright," Jon says. "Me and Spence are going to auction all your bras on eBay."

Brendon makes an affronted sound and smacks him hard on the thigh, but she's smiling as she does it.

Ryan looks up and out of the bus at where the sun is hiding behind a few solitary clouds. He only blinks when his eyes force him to. When he finds the right focus for inside again, Brendon is staring at his reflection in the glass.

"You and me, Ross," she says with a lopsided grin. "You and me. These other two are just dust."

Ryan can feel his mouth curving into a smile, a lazy one, the first real one of the day. 

"Tell me about it," he says, and looks away from the way the t-shirt laps at the top of her thighs, the way her bare toes are restlessly pushing against the empty air.

-

She crashes at Ryan's a couple of times while they're recording, mostly - probably - because she loves his apartment. It's fitting, he thinks. She and Keltie always got on and Keltie had liked to keep things organised. So it is that Brendon always knows where the cutlery is and where the glasses hide and where he likes to keep his spare picks.

She cooks him pancakes the first time she stays. Stands by the stove and flips them happily in a pair of ratty tiny shorts and her favourite bikini top. It's later in the summer then, and she's spent sneaky half hours on the bus roof seeing to her tan. Her legs are lithe, almost too skinny for the places she takes them and the things she makes them do, but they never give out. Her toenails are a chipped blue. Just right of her bellybutton she has two long pink marks from where she was playing with Dylan on the floor and got scratched by mistake.

Ryan sits at his table and pretends he's not awake. He watches the occasional twitch of her hips when she forgets to suppress her shaking in time to the music. He stares at the blister on the back of her left ankle and the way her legs curve up from her feet to make her neat calves.

"You want to take the guitars outside later?" she says cheerfully, swinging round with a plate and the two year old maple syrup she'd found somewhere strange. 

"Sure," he says absently and wonders if she cooks like this at her own place too, whether she does everything so comfortable in her own skin and with such ease.

-

"For old time's sake," she says and he almost relents.

She's only half dressed and she's stolen one of his patterned shirts, but it's not buttoned up. Hanging open, her perfect b-cups are on show. Her bra's blue with the tiniest of bows. Further down, her panties are white with big red polka dots. She's been going through his closet and her own hastily packed bag for half an hour now. She still hasn't decided what to wear.

"Please," she says, glancing briefly down as she starts to do up her buttons and Ryan hears himself saying okay.

She grins her brightest grin and then her long bare legs are slotting either side of his and she's sitting herself down in his lap and handing him the eyeliner. 

"Not too heavy," she says, "and no crazy birds."

"No crazy birds," he repeats solemnly as she stares up to let him do her bottom lids.

His spare hand rises to cradle her thigh. Just to keep her steady. Just so she won't fall if he pokes her by mistake and she jerks back.

She hums something he doesn't recognise and holds perfectly still.

He doesn't poke her by mistake. He never has.

When he's done, she looks around for her maybe pile but doesn't move from his lap. She smiles.

"Sometimes I miss the top hat," she says.

Sometimes Ryan misses her ridiculous taffeta skirt, her corset, her dark red waistcoat, her eyeshadow as thick and heavy as his.

"We're hippies now," he says outloud instead. "All we need is love."

-

Brendon and Sarah make a pretty couple. Sarah comes out with them once or twice and she and Brendon dance laughingly with one another, shoulders bumping when they smile. They share each other's drinks, sipped up through brightly coloured straws, and when they dart off to the bathroom halfway through the night they share each other's mascara too.

Most of the guys in the place watch them go into the toilets like they'd like to be there too. Like they'd like to watch what goes on when they're alone. Ryan only wants to watch Brendon.

He wants to watch her stretch in the morning with her t-shirt lifting up to show off her bellybutton. He wants to watch her sit on the edge of his bed and lean down to pull off her shoes. He wants to watch her fall back onto the covers to let him get her bra. He wants to slide her panties off and wrap those legs around his waist. He wants her to tease him the morning after by walking round his kitchen in something frivolous and lacy.

What he gets is stolen glances in mirrors and an ache from her happy smiles at him on stage. What he gets is an empty apartment and the occasional picture on Twitter of her taking the latest stolen t-shirt for a ride.

-

“Maybe the world wasn't ready for us,“ Brendon says, her head propped on his thigh. “Admit it, we were pretty hot.”

It's a throwaway statement, and it's designed to make them both laugh, but she sounds so sad as she says it that Ryan doesn't have it in him to try and fake it. Just like he doesn't have it in him to say the words that have been weighing him down for days. 

Everybody cheats, lies, steals. you shouldn't be surprised.

“There are other girls out there, right?” she carries on and it's like she's trying to make him feel better rather than the other way around. “Plenty more multiple orgasms in the sea.”

He presses his fingers gently into her neck and rubs to make up for his lack of words. For the very first time, the idea of her and Sarah together is interesting. It's a sudden vivid image that hits him - fingers being crooked just right and Brendon crying out, coming undone. 

He doesn't make more than a half-hearted effort push the visual away.

When his finger stop moving she sighs and turns to press a kiss to his knee before getting up.

“I'm going home for awhile, I think,” she says. “Call me about that barbecue.”

-

Ryan doesn't. He doesn't call anyone at all for awhile. Instead he wanders around his apartment, alone, like he ought to.

It takes a phone call from Ginger Smith to end that. She talks about how her house is getting emptier and emptier as the kids grow up and how there was some mess up with a new fridge. Somewhere along the line he finds himself picking the conversation up, laughing as they remember that one summer and that one fort tent and that time he and Spencer had made Jackie so upset she'd locked herself in the bathroom for three hours.

When he finally hangs up the apartment is still empty, but he's not quite so alone.

-

‘i’m sorry,’ he texts Brendon later, though two weeks have passed since the shit actually went down, “it's always the ones that actually make you smile.”

She sends him a smiley back. And then ten minutes later a 'bbq or else!'

He feels forgiven even though he hasn't done anything wrong.

-

‘writing again, i think,’ he texts Pete. ‘is it cheating if i put it in 4/4 time so she's the one that says it?’

-

“You're buzzing,” Brendon says, innocently relieving him of his beer so he can reach into his pocket for his phone.

She’s got her bright red sunglasses on and Shane has brought Dylan, so she's feeding him stray bits of burger bun when no-one else is looking.

His backyard is full of smoke and people and a wobbly table with emptying plates of food. Everything smells good and the sun is shining and Spencer is manning the barbecue in a naked man apron Jon and he picked out specially.

“It’s Pete,” Ryan says, turning back to Brendon. “He wants to know when you're going to stop fucking around with us and go be the fifth member of Fall Out Boy.”

Brendon purses her lips thoughtfully and pauses in trying to get Dylan up on her lap. 

“What’s he offering?” she says. “Tell him I cost no less than a private jet and a night alone with his wife.”

She gives up on Dylan with a sigh and flops back against her seat, closing her eyes and letting the sun beat on down. The hand she tucks neatly by her side is sporting a few little freckles by the wrist and four thin threaded bracelets.

Ryan smiles and pretends to key words into his phone.

-

'y.' The text from Pete actually reads. 'tke a chance tke a chance tke a chchchance. if she says no im still free.'

-

“Ryan,” she says, “Ryan,” and he finally looks up.

He's on his living room floor, his back propped up against his couch, Dylan on his lap, and he doesn't quite remember it getting so dark.

“I fell asleep?”

She bites her lip on a smile. “Yeah, missing your own party, Ross."

He doesn't really care and it must communicate because she sits down next to him and stretches her legs out ‘til their ankles are brushing.

“What you thinking?”

He can hear the party chatter going on outside - people talking, laughing, the clink of a beer bottle - but he's not really sure he's thinking about anything.

“You ever consider dating guys?”

Brendon stops playing with her hands and the background noise Ryan had so clearly a minute ago seems to suddenly fade.

“Yeah,” she says, slowly, like for once she isn't one hundred percent sure of herself. “There are a few people I’d make an exception for.”

He's a little bit drunk, the alcohol skidding clumsily through his veins, and hearing her say it feels like too much, like more than he can have.

“So, my party,“ he says, standing up. “We should probably go join that.”

“Ryan,” she says, and she's not getting up from the floor so he stops and turns back to look at her. “Ask if you're on the list.”

He loses another second there, watching her stare at her toes, making sure there's only one way it can be interpreted. 

Then he clears his throat. “I am on the list?”

“Yes,” she says, stretching out a hand so he can pull her up to standing and then smiling wryly. “You had a teenage me so very confused.”

-

They go back out into the garden, but not for long. The night is dying with the last of the barbecue’s coals and Ryan’s flimsy lantern set-up has never been good at holding the real dark at bay.

People start to melt away in ones and twos and he finds himself receiving hugs from familiar faces and promises of forthcoming invitations to things.

He loses Brendon as he's walking out through the kitchen with people to the door, finding abandoned bags and suggesting places that keys might hide.

When the house is finally empty he ducks back out into the garden where he finds her stacking paper cups and making a pile of plates. He goes over meaning to help, but she's already done most of the work, so instead he watches, waiting ‘til she's done.

“You want to stay?” he asks.

She taps the top of a cup absentmindedly. “Sure.”

“Is with me alright?” he says. “I don't think the bed's made up in the other room.”

“Yeah, Ryan,” she says softly. “With you is fine.”

-

He wakes up to her reading the book he keeps by his bed, propped up against the pillows. Her hair's a tousled mess, her skin pale from sleep, and her glasses are held in her hand like she'd gotten too caught up in words to remember to put them on.

“Morning,” he says, shuffling close enough that he can put his head on her shoulder and look at what page she's on.

“I didn't lose your place,” she says immediately.

He smiles but he wouldn't have cared if she had. Up close she smells like smoke from last night and the softener he uses on his clothes. She's wearing the first t-shirt he picked up off the floor last night and he feels a little guilty that he hadn't found her a clean one to sleep in.

“Shower,” he says, nudging her with his nose. “You wanna go first?”

“No,” she says putting down the book and looking at him critically. She tosses her glasses safely over the other end of the bed and then she laces her fingers with his and pulls.

He falls forward in surprise and she grins wickedly and keeps tugging.

“Alright, alright,” he says, trying not to fall over. “I smell that bad?”

She laughs at him then, as she kicks shoes out the way so she can drag him towards the door, and he finds he doesn't have it in him to care.

He holds onto the giddy feeling in his stomach and lets her lead him where she wants, even when the easy half-light of the bedroom turns into the full-blooded brightness of the bathroom.

He follows even though he treads on an stray hairbrush - he stops only when she stops, and then he stumbles. 

“Easy there,” she says, steadying him with her hands and her voice until he's pressing his forehead to her collarbone, feeling all of seventeen.

He almost baulks then and there, but when he looks up she's smiling at him like maybe she's getting everything she ever wanted too.

She looks at him almost shyly and then she reclaims his hands and drags them down to her waist.

He presses a kiss to her shoulder and then looks down at his fingers, long and ungainly on her hips. He lifts the fabric of her t-shirt until his palms are resting against her skin and then he slowly drags it up, pulling it off the arms she raises for him.

He cups her breasts in his hands, thumbing a freckle, and she breathes out slow and shuddery, ducking her head to kiss him and he kisses her back, happy and lost.


End file.
